It is definitely lame, but it'll probably work.  Still glad I backed up my downloads, though.  I shall certainly be more cautious with them in the future.

I'm not impressed. I've been looking at GoG for awhile thinking about buying, but haven't done it. This behavior just screams unprofessional twit, and it does not make me want to give them my business which would be, admittedly, small. I have certainly stopped telling people about them as I don't trust them at this point.

I really think people are making too much out of this.

The last feel days I played Fallout and Master of Magic and GoG.com was offline. So they were planning a big hard and software update and decided to make a little stunt out of it? Really not that big of a deal. Honestly I'm glad a lot of people are now aware of this great service.

GoG games aren't like Steam. They don't have to "be up and running" for my games to work. They do provide the service of re-downloading and I suppose some people might have been a bit annoyed if they planed to re-download something just now. That said it is still much less of an impact then most people on this thread are making it.

Sounds a lot like your average internet drama to me.

IMO they should have posted some "normal" downtime announcement. Something like this recent Steam announcement:

Our physical server move is complete, and we've lit up the new servers we've added to the Steam back-end. The last step is to do some migration that, unfortunately, can't be done without downtime.

To perform this work, we'll be taking Steam down for four hours on Monday, September 27, 2010, starting at 2000 (PDT, which is GMT-7). The Steam Store, Steam Community, matchmaking, and leader boards will be down for the duration of this event. The forums will be up.

Sorry for the inconvenience -- we know that the extended duration of the downtime is problematic for our users, but occasional downtime for maintenance is unavoidable.

Yeah, I was thinking they probably knew they would require some downtime to roll out the new site.  However instead of taking a professional approach like Steam, they pulled this sophomoric publicity stunt.

I'm sure if their new site was as great as they make it sound, they would have generated a lot of positive PR from that alone without doing what they did.  Build a rep off of the services you provide, not off of some PR stunt that risks alienating more people.

Whew... I just now heard about this from reading this thread. When I first saw it, I freaked. I love GOG and would have been very disappointed to see them close up shop. I like and use Impulse, but I prefer GOG. However, in my opinion, it was poor PR on their part.

Imagine if you were a current customer of theirs and visited their website over the weekend?  Not everyone follows gaming news sites or gaming related discussion boards.  I'm sure there were a number of customers that were like "WTF?!".  Did they send out email to any of their customers to at least let them know?

No, at least I didnt recieve any email from them.

well i think if u are a customer of gog.com chances are you are an old school or pretty hardcore gamer, and are aware of such technical updates.

Im pretty sure casual gamers who barely use a computer are a common sight on gog.com

As a GOG user, I wasn't bothered by this. I have my games, DRM free, saved to my hard drive and backed up. I can still play the first Fallout even though their site is down. Would I be able to play Civ V if Steam went down for an extended period of time? (Yeah I know, offline mode... whatever).

I will continue to support them since I am also a proponent of their main tenet, no DRM. I won't be playing Civ V or New Vegas, two games I have looked forward to for over a year because of Steam.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of people are looking at this the wrong way. Instead of being upset that GOG went down for four days, they should think about what would happen if Steam went down for four days. Or four weeks. Inconceivable? Well what happens if? As I said above, I had a copy of the file and was able to install on my new machine.

The stunt was a little juvenile. So what? These are the people that care about games and want as many people playing them as possible. Four days down shouldn't have hurt anybody using their service. There is no loader, you can install from the downloaded exe file. I did with Fallout while the site was down.

As soon as their site is back up, I will be buying Baldur's Gate, even though I already own multiple copies and Age of Wonders. Why? Because GOG cares enough to make their games work on Windows 7. Right now I am hating how BG works on my XP machine and wasn't even going to try in W7.

There are so many games on their site that I wanted to play, but never had time. I will make time now and discover (and rediscover) some of the magic that drew me to computer games in the first place.

If you haven't tried GOG, do it. The games are inexpensive. They work. And once you have them, they're yours.

And there is my first post in over six years of being a member.

I'm also not bothered at all by this.  Yeah, it wasn't the best idea for a publicity stunt, but GOG is the *best* digital distribution platform in many ways as it does give us everything that PC gamers have asked for: No DRM, reasonable prices and great titles.  The only thing they don't have is current titles but they are filling a wonderful niche!

A bad PR stunt is hardly enough to drive me away from GOG.  That's nothing!  Draconian DRM schemes?  Buggy/unfinished releases?  Shorter/smaller games to milk DLC micropayments?  Regional overpricing?  etc...  *THESE* are things that would make me consider ditching a digital distribution system or publisher.  But, c'mon, a bad PR stunt has people up in arms when the actual business offering is so good?  That's just looking for something to complain about.

I for one am happy it was just a misguided PR stunt and they haven't gone out of business.  I'll be buying more from them for sure!

At least it's funny.  Well, for me at least, since I don't care if they live or die.

There's two ways to handle something like this:

1. A professional downtime announcement, like what Steam did.

2. Pretend to be closing, cause a lot of people to be worried that they just lost access to their games, and in general act like nitwits with no idea what they're doing.

This thing was a disgrace. I especially hate how they mention "oh we're ending beta now!" They've been quite happy to take peoples money for years without mentioning that the service was in "beta", whatever that means.

I'll never buy a thing from such a shady and poorly run outfit.

I for one am happy they are still around. 

Baldur's gate is now on the games list.  Also you could contact them when it was down to get your games.

gog.com gives me a blank page. How much are they asking for BG? (Which?)

$9.99 for BG1 + Tales of the Sword Coast. Don't see BG2 up on it yet.

So I am the winner. Where is my prizes?

Dont see what was the big changes that needed a complete maintenance. They've only changed the layout a bit and added some worthless "mix" button.  Their community area still is borked, and their downloads and overall site are slow. And no, it's not because of everyone downloading their games.

they added official windows 7 support for their games

windows seven support runs very sloooooooooooooooooowly

$10 for BG1 with the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion.  If you are going to buy it do so quickly before they close down  for the release of BG2.

Can you explain this? I'd like to know what the problem is.

I think my post may have been misunderstood. Actually, I am a GOG customer. I just hadn't been to their site for a little while, so I hadn't seen or heard anything. I prefer to play games more than living on forums reading about them. While I inderstand people being upset over the "stunt", it won't make me stop using them. Indeed, the reason I prefer to buy from them is if they ever close down, etc. my games will still be fine since I don't need a client, internet connection, etc.. Just install them and play. Of course a backup of the installation file(s) are always a good idea.